Cyberattacks are becoming more common and more costly to businesses around the world. How can your organization prevent these attacks from occurring? On top of having a solid cybersecurity plan for you and your employees, consider investing in penetration testing. But what is this process? And what are the benefits penetration testing companies can provide for businesses?
What are Penetration Testing Companies?
Also called pen tests or ethical hacking, penetration testing companies use hackers to attempt to breach a business’ data to highlight any weak spots in a cybersecurity protection plan. The attacks vary, ranging from phishing scams to altering data to installing harmful hardware. Regardless of what systems the hackers use, these attacks happen in real-time but do not harm your company.
Businesses benefit from learning what professional hackers could do to your business before others attempt it. That knowledge is invaluable, as a human working behind the scenes will pick up more than a security scanning program. Once the test is complete, your company receives a security audit highlighting where the hacker was successful and where they were not.
How Often Should You Use Penetration Testing Companies?
We highly recommend you regularly perform penetration testing. Depending on your resources and the size of your company, consider employing penetration testing companies annually, even better, quarterly. Testing as often as possible ensures your organization successfully implements a security plan that will beat all hacking attempts.
Cybersecurity best practices evolve quickly thanks to previous successful attacks and any breaches identified in the programs most companies use: the more you test, the better. However, there are additional times you might want to consider hiring a penetration testing company, for example:
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- New networks and locations added to your company
- Updates to infrastructure, programs, or cybersecurity plans
- Modifications to any programs or policies happen.
- Significant growth in new employees
- New security patch implementations
- Substantial changes occur to your business
How Can a Penetration Testing Company Support Your Business?
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- Reveal Vulnerabilities
- Highlight Damages from Attacks
- Improve Compliance
- Test Your Current Systems
- Bring Peace to Customers and Employees
- Benefit Business Continuity
Reveal Vulnerabilities
A proper cybersecurity strategy protects your entire company and its employees from cybersecurity threats. However, it’s easy to accidentally skip a step or work insecurely when you have many employees or pressures to get results quickly. That’s why a penetration testing company uses skilled humans to attempt to break into your data. They will look at your information security from all angles, prove how safe your data is, highlight places where human error might impact your protection, and more. Once the penetration tester finalizes their report, you can see:
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- What areas of your cybersecurity plan are weaker
- If the tester could gain access to any of your data
- How to improve vulnerability issues to prevent it from reoccurring
Highlight Damages from Attacks
Cybersecurity attacks will cost the world . Prevent your business from contributing to that shocking total with a penetration testing company. On top of highlighting weak areas in your protection plans, a penetration testing company also provides a detailed report of potential damages lost in hypothetical attacks.
That report highlights monetary losses and other valuable items not listed as a dollar amount. Examples include data on disruption of your processes, brand reputation damage, valuable data stolen, and at-risk infrastructure. Having this information is not only a way to motivate you to work harder to protect your company, but it’s also a valuable resource to send to employees. With robust statistics such as those listed, workers will completely understand why it’s essential to work securely.
Improve Compliance
If a penetration testing company successfully hacks your company, your cybersecurity plan is likely not compliant. This process can prove that your company or employees aren’t following security best practices. That is why a penetration testing hacker is so valuable. As soon as they can hack into your information, they’ll flag it in the report for review. You’ll see where you might not be following cybersecurity compliances and how you can ensure your company implements them to avoid expensive fines or trouble from official organizations.
Test Your Current Systems
Especially if you have a cybersecurity monitoring program in place, a penetration testing company provides a necessary test for these current systems. As soon as they successfully hack your system, they can report the exact time. Then, you can cross-reference if your programs picked it up or if it went undetected. . That is 287 dangerous days of lost information, unauthorized people accessing your company, and time failed to recover from stolen data. Use penetration testing hackers to ensure you respond faster to breaches.
Bring Peace to Customers and Employees
In today’s evolving technology-focused society, data protection is at the forefront of most employees’ and customers’ minds. Prove that all their information will be kept safe and won’t be the next target of rising hacking attempts. The best way to bring peace to clients is to show them your business’ cyber security best practices. In these cases, actions are better than words. Prove your company can be trusted by regularly using penetration testing companies and processes.
Benefit Business Continuity
All of the benefits listed above work together to do one thing: keep your business protected and successful. When you successfully keep all cybersecurity threats at bay thanks to penetration testing companies, you can reduce expensive costs that occur when hackers are infiltrate your data. You and your employees won’t waste any time due to the stress and potential network downtime when cybersecurity attacks occur.
Let Integris Be Your Penetration Testing Company
Convinced your business should implement penetration testing into your cybersecurity plan? Integris can help. Our informational technology experts can successfully find any breaches in your security. We’ll also highlight the potential loss of money and data that hacks can cause your business. Our penetration tests build a more substantial cybersecurity plan to keep hackers out of your company, preventing losses. Not only can we perform penetration tests, but we can also help you process the data we’ll provide afterward and implement preventative resources and procedures. If you’re ready to get started with comprehensive managed cybersecurity services,